Lightning
by Keeper of Tomes
Summary: 68 of the 100 Challenge. Being incapable of love, some monsters resort to obsession. Gift!fic to Xekstrin. EDIT: I re-wrote the third part; go to my profile to read the new version.


**Lightning**

**Author: **Keeper of Tomes  
**Song: **"The Lightning Strike, Parts I, II, and III," by Snow Patrol.  
**Summary: **68 of the 100 Challenge. Being incapable of love, some monsters resort to obsession.  
**Words: **5,169  
**Pairing(s): **Cyclonis/Arygyn, Dark Ace/Cyclonis, Cyclonis/Piper

Lyrics from above song in italics. It's a beautiful song. I'm going with the idea that Cyclonis is older than the Storm Hawks. She sure acts like she is. Please just suspend belief for a while.

Right. Sorry, coconutter, another depressing, contemplative one. I'm just in that gear. I hate being mature, too.

Gift to Xekstrin, who suggested the pairing.

Happy reading.

--

**Part One.**

_Just for a minute / The silver forked sky  
Lit you up like a star / That I will follow._

To be surprised is not something a seasoned soldier goes through easily. In fact, it rarely ever happens to us. Us, this dying breed of flag-worshippers, who cup swords in our palms before battle and pray to Mars.

Us.

Not even the lightning that spirals over the red skies of Cyclonia can surprise me, now. Not the churning clouds of vicious gasses, nor the ripping wind against my face. Not the fragile smiles of victims as you slice their heads from their necks. Not the weeping of mothers bent over the bodies of their children.

To surprise me is difficult.

But five years ago, when I was still a young man and my Master only fourteen summers along, I was caught unawares.

It began with a fresh shipment of Nightcrawlers. I have despised Nightcrawlers since I first met them, their expressionless faces and stiff motions somehow un-properly human. What right have they towards humanity? They are nothing but monsters.

The former Master Cyclonis was still alive, and she had stood next to me, a thick sheet of yellow hair obscuring her eyes. She had turned to me and said, "Someone new is coming to work in the palace."

"Who? A Nightcrawler?"

She had uttered a dry laugh, a sound like the choke a skimmer emits before it commits treacherous mutiny and explodes. "Hardly. A man. You might have heard of him; he trained that cursed Sky Knight of yours."

"He was never _my _Sky Knight, Master."

"Hah." She pursed her nonexistent lips. "His name is Arygyn. A Skeelur. We captured him near Terra Neon, of all places. I've fixed a Soul Stone to his spinal cord. We should have control of him for a few months."

"…Why do you want a Sky Knight trainer in the palace?"

"To instruct Lark, of course."

My expression had turned from puzzlement to pure confusion. "I'm sorry, _what_?"

She had slapped me, hard, with a stiff and bony hand. "You will _not question me!!_" Her shriek resounded against the balcony and escaped into the air. It hovered, something cold and black..

Finally, she stilled the quiver in her body and seethed, through gritted teeth, "You are wondering why I did not ask you."

I nodded.

"You are too dangerous to be near her at her age."

"She is…"

"Fourteen. A child."

I grimaced. "When you were fourteen, you were the ruler of an empire."

"And miserable to boot." She turned to leave. "Your orders are to be courteous towards our temporary guest. He will be gone in half a year, Lark will be sufficiently trained, and things will resume as they always have." A dark eye turned over her shoulder to glare at me. "Is that clear?"

Her typical farewell towards me.

"Clear, Master."

And then she was gone.

-

He arrived at midnight, a time that has become laden with images of lightning streaking in the black sky and mysterious strangers bursting through the door. But that evening brought an unattractive man who was mute as the wall he leaned against. The Soul Stone on his back pulsed with a deep, golden glow. In his eyes was an emptiness, his inner memories and beliefs scraped out and captured in the hands of a witch.

He was a body. He was a thing.

Barely a person.

When he saw me, he smiled, muscles of his face sliding smoothly upwards until his eyes tilted and his features became lax.

"Hello."

Voice all nasal, like he'd just breathed in a good amount of helium.

I did not return the greeting. "Have you met Her Majesty yet?"

"Senior or junior, boy?"

I swallowed the urge to hit him. "Both."

He shrugged. "Only the lady of the house. Little miss Lark is in bed."

"And are you allowed to call her that? 'Little miss Lark'?"

And that man, Arygyn, smiles like it's no big deal. "No one said I couldn't."

"She'll bite you if you do. Lark, I mean."

"We'll see."

He sounded so smug, it punched me thick in the stomach. I spun off on my heel and stormed back to the training grounds.

A week later, I walked past the sparring arena and heard the two of them scuffling about. Curiosity got the better of me…. It always does… And I soon found myself staring like a guilty schoolboy through a slit in the iron door.

Locked out, glancing inside.

He was sitting on the railing. She was doing the scuffling.

He had in his hands a staff, topped with an orange orb. Small bolts of orange lightning were peppering the earth, and Lark, --small, beautiful little Lark, whom I had known since she was a babe--, dodged them as well as she could manage.

Sometimes she'd be too slow and the light would zap her. She would grunt. There would be pain.

The bastard was hurting her.

I met her outside the arena after practice, having never left. "Are you alright?"

She brushed dust from her battle suit and shrugged.  
"Does it hurt? I heard the blows."

"No." Large eyes glared at me. "Don't fuss over me like a maid. I'm fine."

And I silenced myself.

A few days passed before I found myself standing attentively at the arena's door once again, watching as they fought. She had a weapon now, and was striking at him with futile blows as he stood, unmoving, in the center of the ring, letting out faint barriers of yellow light.

She was frowning as he smiled.

Somehow, he managed to avoid every single one of her strikes, no matter how fast they came or how sneaky she was in dealing them out. Somehow.

Magic was all I could use to explain it. Terrible, terrible magic.

Finally, he stopped and let her land a frail and tired blow with her wooden staff on his shoulder.

"Enough for today."

She was breathing hard. I wanted to hold her and steady her and give her air to flow through her lungs. Her eyes burned with loathing. Lark was riled.

"Now, little miss Lark, let's review strategy, shall we?"

"Stop. Calling. Me that." Her shrill demand rang against uncaring ears.

"When you are surrounded with multiple enemies, what should you do?..."

And then my radio blipped and I headed down the corridor, to where I was needed least of all.

-

"What do you think of him, that Arygyn?"

"Eh."

My eyes narrowed. "What does 'eh' mean?"

"He's tough, I'll give him that. But he's also interesting. I've tried asking him a few questions about what he was like… Before mum sucked him dry n' all. But of course, that's a stupid thing to do."

"It is, rather."

"But it's almost fascinating. He's got so much power. I don't know why I can't beat him. He can't be normal, because I've sparred all the Talons I can and beaten every single one of them. Bet I could even beat you, if I really tried."

"No, you couldn't."

"I could."

"Not unless you ordered me to lose."

"I…. Oh, you're just jealous because you can't do what Arygyn does."

"And what does he do? He casts silly little charms and keeps you just at arm's length away from victory. Don't think I don't know. I've seen him walking around with that weird staff of his."

I didn't mention my spying. It wouldn't do for her to know.

"It's…difficult, I'll admit."

"But not frustrating?"

Her silence frightened me. Finally, she whispered, "He calls me 'little miss Lark.'" Turned towards me with great big eyes looming. "I… I almost like it."

I tried not to show my surprise when the words slipped through her lips.

"I mean, I don't tell him I like it," she continued. "I just… It's like I mean something to him, that I'm not just a student. I don't think he'd ever call me that unless he really cared. Maybe he wouldn't try so hard to have me improve if he didn't really _care_."

I wanted to swear that I cared as well, but that was hardly behavior her mother would approve of. Was not becoming of a man in my position.

She was lovely, even then.

Her smile was brittle and disappeared when she stood and said goodnight.

-

There was a storm one night. She was fresh out of the arena and standing at a grand window in her mother's throne room.

I was fresh out of battle and red blood smeared my face. Somehow, I was afraid of her seeing me like this. All dripping with the lives of those I'd slain.

But she turned and grinned at me like it was no big deal.

The lightning came and lit up half her face. Turned part of her pale-wash blue and left the other a seething black.

"And?" I whispered.

"Welcome home."

I fell in love with a fourteen-year old, right then.

-

Twisting. They were twisting.

There was no other word for it.

Down in the arena, her lanky limbs folding behind her back to catapult herself, around and around, avoiding each of his blows with concentration. Her brow perpetually folded.

She was faster than before, faster and bolder and smarter. He was making her improve, was bending her malleable body until it could do things few other humans could do. After each training session, he would press his foul, ugly lips to her beautiful fingers.

"You're faster than a wet snake," he'd admit. "But you could be even faster, if you really want to."

At the slightest hint of the possibility of more power, her eyes brightened. Yet no smile appeared. She slid her fingers from his and I smiled with glee at his crestfallen expression.

"Servant, you go too far," she would snap. "Mother would not approve."

"Not approve of more strength?"

And she would hiss a well-practiced mantra: "There is always a point of breakage."

And then she'd leave.

I would quietly slide back down the corridor, so that she could not see me. And I'd watch her, wet with sweat and dirty with grit from the ring. Watch her disappear.

Aergynn would follow her out the door, standing and leaning against the steel frame.

"No use hiding, Dark Ace."

His voice often found me in the shadows. And I'd offer no response, because he deserved none.

She was mine and always will be.

-

_I want pinned down _/ _I want unsettled  
Rattle cage after cage / Until my blood boils  
I want to see you / As you are now  
Every single day / That I am living_

-

He left sometime in the middle of the winter. She seemed glad to see him go; "Stupid man, going beyond his bounds." But something felt strange to me.

Finally I asked, "Do you miss him?"

And she, not skipping a beat, would always say "Yes."

Sometimes I considered the possibility that she wanted him, perhaps even desired him, as young students sometimes do towards their older mentors. But he was an ugly, nasal-voiced little man, who drove his charges to an insane breaking point. Did he do that to each Sky Knight I've killed?

I was never jealous, never envious.

I was only looking out for Lark.

She grew up and I hoped she would forget him, but she never did. So it was only natural that, at age sixteen, upon taking the throne, she asked for him.

"Bring me that blasted Skeelur."

And we, her faithful servants, graciously obeyed.

-

There was no Soul Stone strapped to him this time. Just him, just a man, just a thing. A vile creature, almost animal.

He was so easy to capture, I almost wonder if he let us take him.

But impossible.

He had no recollection of never being on Cyclonia.

I was told to leave the two of them, a Master and a monster, alone in the throne room, something I did reluctantly.

There was to be no spying this time.

Hours later, when it was near dawn but the lightning of a thundering storm still persisted, she called me to the highest tower and we stood, with her conducting the tempest.

And she was lit up again.

"Why did you ask for him?"

"Something I wanted to clarify." She turned and her violet eyes were shocked blue as the sky split into sections, broken by searing white light. "It's nothing important." A smile. "I called you here to inform you that the Skeelur will be leaving early tomorrow. Sorry, that should probably be today. It's morning."

"Hm."

"I have a Soul Stone you can use to remove his memory. It shouldn't take long."

"Hm."

"Do it now, Dark Ace." A yellow crystal glittered in her hand. A subtle toss later and it was in my gloved fingers.

The lightning came again and she looked so beautiful.

"As you wish, my Master."

-

He was sitting up when I arrived.

"Stand."

He followed the order willingly. I was not used to seeing him in anything but a Talon's uniform, and his regular garb was quite repulsive. I could not wait to get it over with.

He was mute as I slammed the crystal into his back. I left him writhing against a wall, feeling each of his recollections of the past twenty-four hours disappear into a stone latched into his spine.

He was there and feeling pain.

The monster screamed.

-

Her silhouette was bright against the electrified sky.

I bowed.

"It is done, Master."

Her smile was all I needed to see to know that she was pleased.

--

_Painted in flames / All peeling thunder  
Be the lightning in me / That strikes relentless_

--

**Part Two.**

_The sunlight burning through the loose flags / Painted high on white church walls  
I chase my blood from brain to thumped heart / Until I'm out of breath for trying._

Losing your memory is never a pleasant sensation.

I knew something was missing like a squirrel realizes its acorns have been stolen. I was standing on a small terra near Neon, in a Talon uniform, with rope around my wrists. There was a spidery sensation on my spine and a blank patch in my head. An empty hole on a quilt.

Soul Stone. There was something oddly expected about that.

And of course I tried to remember what in Sweet Jesu's name had happened, but I couldn't.

Not for years.

Two, to be exact.

And then _they_ came, rolling over the horizon, because they think they know something we all don't. Don't most people?

I sacrificed my humanity for victory, and all they gave was an oath.

How lame.

How cowardly.

And yet they had answers, and so I let them take me, because I didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of finding anything out otherwise.

--

Standing before the Master is a cold thing to do. It's worse than winter on Blizzaris. Ice washes down veins and it hurts to move.

"Leave us."

I was left alone with Cyclonis herself, her snarky little smile driving rays of confusing familiarity through my head.

"We've met before, you know. When I was a child. My mother had you kidnapped and strapped a Soul Stone to your back."

"You're still a kid."

She barged on, ignoring my remark. No doubt she had heard those words countless times before. "You called me 'little miss Lark.' You taught me how to fight. Pushed me until I nearly broke. And what I want to know is…"

A dangerous question hovered. She was such a stupid little girl.

"…Did you ever remember me?"

I combed through a tangled memory. I'm a Skeelur. We're all scatterbrained. That natural fact plus the Soul Stone…

And the image of her violet eyes and dead skin only appeared through images in papers and media.

"No."

"Shame." She sat, her hood uncurling so that light flashed onto her attractive little face. Lips curled down. "You used to like me."

I couldn't imagined the sensation of ever liking a thing like her. She was not real. She couldn't possibly be real.

"You had such an immense amount of power. I could never beat you." She gave me a patronizing gaze, the kind a mother might bestow upon a kid that didn't know better.

"What are you thinking, Arygyn?"

Her lips formed my name with striking familiarity.

"I'm… I'm thinking you're a power-hungry little brat who thinks she has the right to do as she pleases when she pleases."

Instead of getting angry, she laughed. "What are you trying to do, Arygyn? Convert me? You aren't even of this world, if I've done my research right. What does Atmos mean to you? Is this some stupid game of good and evil or some other kind of bull? Didn't you ever learn that there's no black and white or even gray, there's just will? And I have will, you gay little magician. I have strength. Atmos has old men in robes and idealism.

"But I have armies and armies of scientists, Nightcrawlers, Talons. I have weapons and blood lust and dark spells of my own. If there was one thing you ever taught me, it was that my mother was wrong: There is never a breaking point. There's a point where you give up. And beyond that? Nothing but power."

She stood back up.

I crossed my arms. "There is always right and wrong."

"Maybe. But do I look like the sort of person who'd care about that?"

"You are such a sick and spoiled and twisted brat."

"That _you_ made, Arygyn. And it doesn't matter whether there was a Soul Stone strapped to you or not, you were still the one who pinned me down with claws of lightning, who said that no matter what, strength was all there was, that the difference between the winner and the loser is how badly you want to win." She grinned, and I felt sick, because something in the back of my head was telling me she could not be lying.

"I wanted to thank you," she finished.

I recall frowning. I recall shuffling forward. "How safe do you feel, all wrapped up in cockamamie ideas about power? How much can you trust yourself not to just… fall?"

"Hm?"

"Teetering, that's what you're doing. You're dangling on the edge of a precipice and you don't know whether it's safer to fall or stay where you are. Some kind of lame-butt existence that is, eh?"

She laughed, so cruel and inhuman that I stepped back. "I always envied you," she admitted, wiping at her eyes, "Because you had such a sense of self-righteousness. Even under my mother's control, you thought you had a right to do anything. I picked that up from you, you know. You have created your own enemy."

Cyclonis stood. Her smile disappeared. "You really didn't remember me?"

I shook my head, glaring at her.

"…Well then. Guards!"

I was escorted to the jail.

There was no doubt that the Dark Ace was going to bring another Soul Stone, but crystals are only as strong as you want them to be, as you _will_ them to be. So because I willed the crystal to be weak, it stole none of my memories.

And then I screamed, because the Dark Ace was not going to be satisfied with his work otherwise.

-

They dumped me back near Neon, where they'd picked me up in the first place. I stood for a long time and considered everything the Master had told me. It was entirely possible, I supposed, that everything she said was true.

She had to be a child at some point.

Maybe she was even a sweet little girl.

I'd never really know.

Then I returned to the Condor, to the Storm Hawks, tagging along quietly and watching them get their wings. I'd been watching them and their leader Aerrow ever since the other Guardians had unearthed the fragments of some prophecy.

Things were coated in oil for a few weeks, smooth and quick.

And then, out in the boondocks, I ran into _her_.

I didn't recognize her, at first.

She'd placed a Shielding Stone around her neck, turning her hair crazy-sun yellow. And for good measure, a spreckle of freckles. She looked innocent until her gaze turned onto me, and then I saw a coldness behind her eyes. Which vanished when she smiled and walked up to me.

"Arygyn the Skeelur! I've heard of you."

I was silent.

"I'm new around here, in the North. Mind showin' me 'round? You look like someone I can trust."

"What's your name?" I needed to make sure. She sounded so bubbly, it felt impossible.

She seemed to stumble around a bit, her tongue pushing on different parts of her mouth and teeth. Finally, her answer came.

"M' name's Lark."

And I knew.

-

I decided to get to know her without her knowing me. She obviously didn't realize I had figured her out.

"You're a weird one," she said.

"Well, that's what most people say, but I tend to ignore it."

"People say things about you, too?"

"All the time." My eyes lowered themselves to glare into hers. All wide and cute, until you really dived deep into that black pupil and saw an inner darkness. Did I really plant that?

"I'm always told I'm so childish… That I'm a brat…." She sounded genuinely crestfallen. "By people I respect, too."

We walked along. "Have you been around the North a lot?"

She shook her head.

"Then let me show you Neon."

Her eyebrow was raised, a slim line of gold. "I… have to go and meet a friend later, but… if we make it quick."

I merely snapped my gloved hands—

--and we were there, Lar--, Cyclonis, in a silly stupor. "How'd ya do that without crystals?" she blurted.

I have always loved Neon more than every other terra in Atmos. There's a sense of perpetual life there, an escape from the darkness of war and life and other inconveniences.

Neon by day is very quiet, very lulled. The sky is blue and there are flags that slide through the air. I wanted to ask her, "Are you a child, Lark? Still a child? Or are you that woman, that monster, you claim to be, so vehemently, with such black vigor?"

But instead came: "What do you think of this war?"

"War?" She shrugged. "It's… almost scary, but not really. I mean, it's just a thing to me. I'm used to it. My mom... Ah... She… She seemed to like it at times. It brought our family a lot of power. I don't care so much."

The answer, I noted, was honest. Strangely so.

She whirled and smiled and was a kid.

--

_Worry not everything is sound / This is the safest place you've found  
The only noise beating out is ours / Lacing our tea from honey jars_

--

"Why'd you bring me here?"

"Most kids like Neon."

"I… I'm hardly a kid anymore."

"You're young." My eyebrows raised themselves high into my forehead.

"Yeah, but I've had to grow old. I never really feel safe when I'm old, though. But it's safe here. I'm not isolated. I'm not just a thing that has to run the whole show. I'm in charge of a lot of shit back home and it's… not fun."

That was it. She was lonely.

I don't think I'll ever remember actually training her. But I think it was true.

I think she was cracked: by me, by her mother.

I don't feel guilty, though.

Not really…

…Okay, I do.

-

She announced she had to go.

"I'm meeting a friend," she snapped.

"Where?"

"…Around." She turned towards a distant storm, building with blue-green electricity. "Near that gale."

"What's her name?"

Cyclonis…No, _Lark_, smiled.

"Piper."

--

_Why don't you rest your fragile bones / A minute ago you looked alone  
Stop waving your arms you're safe and dry / Breathe in and drink up the winter sky_

_--_

**Part Three.**

_Slowly the day breaks apart in our hands / And soft hallelujahs flow in from the church  
The one on the corner you said frightened you / It was too dark and too large  
To find your soul in._

--

What made me bring him back?

My initial idea was to thank him. He made me strong.

Then I thought perhaps I wanted to spite him. He made me cold.

But it was never his fault, never his intention.

I ended up giving him my purpose and mocking his. Ended up acting exactly like what he referred to me as: A brat. Is that all I am? A brat?

He didn't remember me. Didn't remember the hours in the ring where he'd coach me, insisting perfection, insisting that I become everything I could and more. He offered me limitless power and I ended up with only the thirst for it. Only the ambition.

Perhaps stupid purposes, like ruling the world, are fruitless after all.

Breaking points are for weaklings; Arygyn told me that.

So am I weak?

I broke, didn't I?

-

It was a stupid mistake, bumping into him on the boondocks. He didn't recognize me, and that was a blessing, but I knew him: The ugly face and ridiculous clothing. I asked him to show me around, because there was still time to spare before my rendezvous with Piper. And how often do I get to wander around Atmos?Besides, I was attracted to the magic he had, to the power.

Always have been.

Always will.

He took me to Neon with a snap of his fingers. There was beautiful building after beautiful building, all small and sweet and white-washed. And then we collided with a church and I refused to enter, because it was so... large. It reminded me of home.

I lose myself in places when they are too big.

-

Back home, after the mission had failed and I was standing on the balcony, the Dark Ace came.

"Well?" he whispered.

"It blew up in my face. She wouldn't… She wouldn't join."

Beautiful, sweet, innocent Piper. I had always wanted her by my side, wanted her body close to mine. I have always wanted what I cannot have.

The Dark Ace drew himself beside me and placed his gloved hands on the railing. "There will be other chances."

I smiled.

"Do you remember that gay little magician?"

He snorted. "Arygyn? That one your mother hired to train you?"

"Right."

"What about him?"

I could hear the envy, the dismay. I wiped the smile from my lips. "Should you ever see him again.. Around Atmos, wherever… I would enjoy it very much if you were to kill him."

He smiled, then. The Dark Ace grinned from ear to ear like a Cheshire Cat with fresh blood on his claws. "Consider it done."

"Do you know what else I would enjoy?" I blurted.

"What?"

And I dove forwards, slamming our mouths together. Right then, as if God or Satan were watching, the sky opened and cold rain came. The kiss lasted all of two seconds, before I pulled back.

"I always wondered how that'd feel."

He seemed dumbstruck. I walked away.

He wouldn't know that there were two faces I was seeing, alternating around instead of his own. Wheels. Spokes.

I was wet when I sat on the throne, legs crossed as the water dripped down my face and to the cold steel floor.

There in the water: Sweet Piper, beautiful Piper. And Arygyn, stiff. Unreachable. They each have something I want. How am I supposed to convey my desire? How?

I must show them what I can do, what I can wield. I have power. Power beyond imagination. I will best them both.

And they will bow, because power should always be respected.

The rain was coming down, outside. And I felt cold, but that was nothing special.

I always feel cold.

--

_Something was bound to go right sometime today /All these broken pieces fit together To make a perfect picture of us / It got cold and then dark so suddenly and rained  
It rained so hard the two of us / Were the only thing  
That we could see for miles and miles._

_--_

War brought us together and war will wedge us apart.

I had a dream, once. I dreamed I was standing on the edge of some nameless terra with _him _beside me, an insane smile on his ugly features. And he had remembered. He had known.

And my hands had tangled themselves with his arm and it had been raining. There was no lightning, no thunder, just rain. An impossible amount of rain. We were drowning and it didn't matter.

He remembered, so that meant I could ask him.

"So who was I?"

Because I _can't_ remember.

"You were… little miss Lark."

But the dream always ends and I forget again.

I wake up and there is nothing but the storm and electricity bubbling outside my window.

-

I will see him again, if it is the last thing I do.

--

_And in the middle of the flood I felt my worth / When you held onto me like I was your little life raft  
Please know that you were mine as well._

-

_~Fin_

_

* * *

_

Sorry if the formating was weird. I was kinda half-assed when I did it.

Do you like, Xekstrin?


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